Is WordPress a Blog in the eyes of Google?
-
Hi,
My online Shop is based on WordPress with the WooCommerce plugin. Now, I have met a SEO guy who told me that's bad in the eyes of Google:
Because Google apparently sees my website as a blog and not as a E-Commerce site.
Wow, this statement really confused my, since I am working so hard on content and good rankings. Any opinions on this would be appreciated.
Best, Robin
-
Ahh ok I follow you! Well, we haven't run any actual experiments using 2 online shops like the example you mentioned (one using Woo & the other using another platform). But we have taken existing OpenCart & Magento sites that were already ranking for competitive terms and migrated them over to WooCommerce. The rankings dipped for a short period but recovered and have since superseded the rankings they had before.
I was skeptical of WooCommerce at first but it has become our preferred solution for eCommerce. I'm not saying the others are bad or anything.
To answer your question, I don't think it would make a difference if you used one platform over another if they were both structured the same and had similar social engagement, etc. As long as you keep things RELEVANT and keep the site geared around your target audience needs, you should be fine either way.
Hope this helps!!
-
No, it was a thought on a fictional experiment.
If you create 2 online shops with the same content, the results would be the same (forget about duplicate content for that thought experiment).
Now will the results still be the same if you have 2 different systems, e.g. Magento and WordPress? Given that URL structure, social shares and other ranking signals are equal.
-
Certainly Robin! I'm happy to share my experience and opinion
In terms of rankings, Google simply bases it on relevancy. I don't think you should worry too much about blog vs ecommerce. Woo Commerce is a great tool and IMO delivers the best of both worlds. It gives the ability to have an online store while at the same time, gives the blog platform where you can post relevant content for your site users.
To answer your question, I first need to clarify what you mean by:
"If you have the same content on all pages and one system WooCommerce (WordPress) and one Magento, would that make a difference?"
Do you also have a Magento store?
-
Thank you for your feedback. He didn't give any specifics, just said that Google puts WordPress sites in the 'blog' category.
Although, I don't know if Google is differentiating between blogs and ecommerce sites in terms of ranking.
The question is: If you have the same content on all pages and one system WooCommerce (WordPress) and one Magento, would that make a difference? My guess is not, but I am not an expert Thanks again for you answer.
-
Hey,
I Agree with Bryan, and I myself have ecommerce websites with woo commerce that have blogs as well. When you go to the posts section and add a post that should be going to the blog section on your website. Google is looking for good rich content on your pages explaining each product.
-
Hey Robinl!!
We have several projects that use WooCommerce. All have an online store and blog. No problems with any of them!
I am not sure where he is getting that idea from as I am certain Google understands that WooCommerce is a WP plugin that allows you to run the online store on the WP (blog) platform. Was this just his opinion or was there any supporting information that he gave you? Maybe based on another project he'd worked on?
IMO and experience, you are fine to use this set up. We have several sites set up using this same structure without any issues. We've even moved some Opencart and Magento sites over to use WooCommerce. They too are doing just fine!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Javascript content not being indexed by Google
I thought Google has gotten better at picking up unique content from javascript. I'm not seeing it with our site. We rate beauty and skincare products using our algorithms. Here is an example of a product -- https://www.skinsafeproducts.com/tide-free-gentle-he-liquid-laundry-detergent-100-fl-oz When you look at the cache page (text) from google none of the core ratings (badges like fragrance free, top free and so forth) are being picked up for ranking. Any idea what we could do to have the rating incorporated in the indexation.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | akih0 -
Google + and Schema
I've noticed with a few of the restaurant clients I work with that Schema isn't contributing at all to their SERP -- their Google + page is. Is there any way to have more control over what Google is pulling to help make UX better? I.e. showing photos of the restaurant without a logo, etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Anti-Alex0 -
How to reverse declining Google rankings?
We have a long established business since 2004 and have been fortunate that having been one of the original companies in our industry, we have always enjoyed strong Google rankings. Unfortunately, these have been steadily declining over the past couple of years and a comparison of August to date against the equivalent period last year has seen a 20% drop in traffic from Google. We don't believe that it is being caused by a penalty and rather is the result of some strong players entering our market and tightening their focus which has caused us to take a dip in rankings. We are guilty of being complacent in our SEO - largely due to not knowing what to do and being scared to touch it when it was working in case we broke it! - but now it's time to fight back. We still have a strong site, good traffic levels and a strong product offering. We have knowledge of SEO and resources in house, but are not experts by any means. Our current plan is to: perform a technical site audit, fixing the issues highlighted by the Moz Pro Software put strong emphasis on our blog, writing daily about the latest news and events in our industry provide weekly content articles which are more in depth than the daily blog articles and which will be of interest to our community undertake surveys and publish infographics and statistics with the hope of being picked up in national newspapers Are there any key elements that we are missing out in this plan, or is that it in a nutshell? Any help and advice is greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | simonukss0 -
Blog On Subdomain - Do backlinks to the blog posts on Subdomain count as links for main site?
I want to put blog on my site. The IT department is asking that I use a subdomain (myblog.mysite.com) instead of a subfolder (mysite.com/myblog). I am worried b/c it was my understanding that any links I get to my blog posts (if on subdomain) will not count toward the main site (search engines would view almost as other website). The main purpose of this blog is to attract backlinks. That is why I prefer the subfolder location for the Blog. Can anyone tell me if I am thinking about this right? Another solution I am being offered is to use a reverse proxy. Thoughts? Thank you for your time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ecerbone0 -
New my domain.com/blog option vs. my blog.mydomain.com option
Our e-commerce site has been on Big Commerce for about a year now. One thing many SEO folks had told us is that having a blog located at /blog was going to help more than a subdomain blog. option. BC has never had the option to have a blog hosted on their platform (/blog) until now. I am now wondering, since we have lost traffic in the past and are trying everything we can to regain it, if we should purchase the Wordpress Site Redirect upgrade and move the subdomain blog (blog.) to the new site option /blog. Any help or feedback from you is very much appreciated. I have attached a screenshot of our main website vs. our blog from Open Site Explorer in case it helps anything. I29Tw5P
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | josh3300 -
Client has been COPYING blog posts to wordpress.com for years. Now what?
Just discovered my client has been copying all her blog posts over to her wordpress.com blog account. So she has duplicate content to what is on her site. She has roughly 700 posts on her main site but doesn't look like that many on the wordpress site. There are no inbound links coming off the wordpress site that I could find. Here's an example: http://thevanillaqueen.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/is-canola-oil-a-healthy-choice/ http://vanilla.com/is-canola-oil-a-healthy-choice/ What are you recommendations for what should be done? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | katandmouse0 -
Category Base in Wordpress
I notice that there is a checkbox on the Yoast SEO Plugin for "strip category base". What is the reason to do this? What are the SEO advantages and disadvantages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340 -
Sites banned from Google?
How do you find out sites banned from Google? I know how to find out sites no longer cached, or is it the same thing once deindexed? As always aprpeciate your advice everyone.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pauledwards0